No One Dared Call ‘The Final Solution’ ‘The Final Solution’ Until It Was Well Underway

With that in mind, I offer up a Tweet thread by Brynn Tannehill about what is going on under our noses while those who should care are going wall-to-wall about Joe Biden’s nose.

Twenty years ago I asserted that if Gay, Inc. did not then and there substantively include trans people and demand that Barney Frank modify ENDA to include trans people that there would be no federal anti-discrimination legislation in my working lifetime.

Of course there was no chance for trans-inclusive ENDA to pass in 1999 – though not because trans people were ‘too much too soon’.  We all know – and knew – the reason why: Because there also was no chance for Barney Frank’s and HRC’s gay-only ENDA to pass in 1999.

Barney Frank and HRC knew what game they were playing back then – and it was NOT ‘incremental progress.’

For I also asserted twenty years ago that the same people within the same Gay, Inc. organizations that were then systematically excluding us from consideration from gainful employment within said organizations and who were not merely speaking ‘incremental progress’-speak on ENDA but who were actively working against trans equality (while cashing paychecks funded by donations intended to support civil rights) were setting the stage – some unwittingly but some very purposely – for the extermination of trans people.

I was pish-poshed on all of those points by LGBs who either lived in jurisdictions that protected their jobs or who had jobs with entities with non-discrimination policies – gay-only non-discrimination policies of course.

I was also pish-poshed on all of those points by that certain rare brand of trans person – the handful who either had already sold out the community in favor of gay marriage (for some reason I’m looking west as I type) or who was in the process of selling out the community in favor of some combination of good, old-fashioned money and the aspiration of being to HRC what Samuel L. Jackson’s character was to Leonardo Di Caprio’s in Django Unchained (and for some reason I felt the need to look east while typing that.)

We’re all going up against the wall now – and I do mean all: Ts as well as LGBs.

The only thing I care about now is holding out long enough to see some, if not all, of those who thought that they could cash out by forcefully putting their boots on our necks to gain personal financial traction enjoy the wall before I do.

Is it a far, far better thing I do today than I’ve ever done before?

No.

But none of you ever cared about the better things that we were capable of.  All you ever cared about was convincing yourselves that you were not merely better than the christianist right, but also better than us.

As Negan recently said: “No one ever thinks that they’re the evil one.”

It takes the victims of that evil to point it out.

I won’t stop pointing it out until I actually am up against that wall.

Two Years Ago: Obergefell v. Hodges

…and then 18 months later, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of those who ramrodded the want of marriage ahead of the basic employment-centric anti-discrimination needs of all LGBTs – including those who might not be coupled – on the national civil rights agenda voted for Trump out of lower-tax greed.

Marriage Derangement Syndrome is as Marriage Derangement Syndrome does.

When Illegitimate Justice Gorsuch writes the opinion that erases marriage equality, I will laugh at every gay Republican who whines.

Has the Future Already Been Forgotten? A Post-2007 Transgender Legal History Told Through the Eyes of the Late, (Rarely) Great Employment Non-Discrimination Act

The article is now available on the website of the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law.  Please read before all of the pro-HRC revisionist crap is shoveled into officially-approved discourse this fall.

Remember 2007: The Bait-and-Switch Began Early

On the day that H.R. 2015 was introduced:

First, Solmonese repeated the lie that the Human Right Scampaign was, in 2007, “the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender advocacy organization.”  (Remember, at that time it had NO trans employees, had NEVER employed a trans woman in any capacity, had just recently been proven to be fraudulently inflating its membership numbers and – of course – was not really advocating for trans rights.)

Then, he immediately referenced the first federal gay rights bill – which was a GAY-ONLY rights bill – yet he immediately followed that with a sentence utilizing “GLBT.” (Tell me that that was not fully calculated to confuse the issue.  And, also, lets not forget that the bill he referenced, not only was not trans-inclusive, but it also was not employment-inclusive! Bella Abzug’s first bill was comprehensive – as to all areas of civil rights law other than employment.)

After his usage of “GLBT” he whips back around to mixing and matching in ways that he can later mold to mean anything he wants:

nearly 90 percent of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should have equal employment opportunities. Furthermore, a healthy majority of Americans support congressional action to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Which ENDA is he referring to?

The one that was then just introduced?

Or one that would only cover gays and lesbians?

Yeh, yeh…

We know how the story ends.  But follow along.  Maybe you can convince yourselves that the Solmonese Scampaign really gave a damn about whether we lived or died.

Appletinis for all!

 

 

2007: Ten Years Ago, Ten Years After

Yes, posts have been sparse of late.

This is one of multiple reasons:

The full text of this article is not yet available on the website of the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law.  However, I will link to it when it becomes available.

Jan. 20th Has Come and Gone – As Has Any Chance of Seeing a Federal LGBT Anti-Discrimination Statute During My Working Lifetime

And so I did my part yesterday.

I refrained from even posting here about the ascension of the Russia-backed, white nationalist junta.

I did tweet, though – and at one point I realized just how under-siege our Constitutional form of government is: In rapid-fire succession, I re-tweeted a half-dozen tweets from Bill Kristol.

And the re-tweeting was because I was in agreement with him.

And then there was George Will:

Twenty minutes into his [          ], Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.

…

“A dependence on the people,” James Madison wrote, “is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” He meant the checks and balances of our constitutional architecture. They are necessary because, as Madison anticipated and as the nation was reminded on Friday, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”

Once again, full agreement – almost.

I omitted one word.

It is not a presidency.  It is a Russia-backed, white nationalist junta.

Period.

The previous eight years were a presidency – at least officially.  But we all know that, in large part, Barack Obama’s two-term presidency ended as Bill Clinton’s did – after only two years.

And therein lies the reason that the only honest assessment of the Obama Administration that one can offer is that it was a failure.

Mind you, I’m not talking about Barack Obama the person.  Had he been eligible to run for a third term, I’d happily have voted for him.

But he wasn’t.

Term limits – via the 22nd Amendment (rammed through Congress in 1947 while under the control of Republicans who, then as now, talk the talk about ‘the people’ deciding for themselves how government should operate, but are always eager to rig the game to stop the majority from electing their candidates of choice) – prevented that.

And, of course, con artistry is what ended the Obama Administration in practical terms on Jan. 3, 2011.  For Clinton it was the Contract on America.  For Obama it was the astroturfism of the Tea Party.

Obama, though, was luckier than Clinton in one respect: the Democrats did maintain control of the Senate for four more years, only losing control in 2015.  So, Obama did get to fill a few more federal judgeships than Clinton was allowed to fill.  But, thanks to that, the Supreme Court seat that, very clearly, a majority of Americans wanted a Democratic president to fill, remains empty.

But ENDA?

As I’ve noted here more than a few times of late, the wants of the few outweighed the needs of the many.

Cue St. Barney:

“We had three items and there was only room for two.”

Those LGBs with the specific want of a military career got what they wanted (and later, those Ts with the same want would get the same – or so they think.)  And those who want us to believe that hate crime laws actually prevent hate crimes got what they wanted.

That was just in Congress during 2009-10.  We all know that those who want it to be true that ‘once we have marriage equality, nothing else will matter’ later got what they think will cause nothing else to matter.

But, of course, they’re about to find out otherwise.

Those who are able to milk the media for quote space in which they bloviate about trans people having “robust bias protections” got….

well, a lot of undeserved space in the media in which to bloviate about the entire universe of ‘sex discrimination’-based judicial and administrative protections which all emanate from a very thin Supreme Court decision from almost 30 years ago is something more than smoke and mirrors.

But, of course, we are about to find out otherwise.

Most of the bloviators, after all, weren’t the ones shopping for employment while the bloviators were bloviating – and most of them aren’t shopping for employment right now as a necessity to pay bills.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t make use of the smoke and mirrors before the fans blow the smoke away  and before the jackboots shatter the mirrors.  Some trans people have worked it in their favor.

But what lives by the administrative ruling can – and likely will – die by the administrative ruling.  And what lives by a passage (albeit an incredibly salient one) from a four-justice plurality opinion from 1989 can – and likely will – die by the five-justice majority that will exist when Thomas, Roberts and Alito get two christofascist playmates (one if the bloviators are as wrong about Kennedy as they are about most everything else.)

And Chelsea Manning’s commutation?

Explain to me how that is of practical value to anyone not named Chelsea Manning?

Yes, I agree, it is symbolic of a change between the Democratic presidential administration of the 1990s and the one that ended on Friday.  But I have to go back to the thing that didn’t change: each one was assaulted – successfully – by the right-wing hate machine.  Perhaps Bill Clinton had an excuse for not seeing his coming – or at least not believing it was possible.  Barack Obama did not.  He’s a smart guy.  He surrounded himself with smart people.  Perhaps one can make an argument that they could not have prevented what happened in 2010, but we’ve already seen – just today – the lengths to which the Russia-backed, white nationalist junta is willing to go to control the narrative.

To the same degree that the Russia-backed, white nationalist junta is willing to push lies, the Obama Administration had the power to push reality.  Sometimes it did, but too often it let itself get run over by lies.

So, I repeat: Barack Obama the man is top notch.  Ditto for Barack Obama the man as the president the individual – for the most part.  But the entity – the era – known as the Obama Administration really is a failure.

Now, I do hope that the protests of today are the start of something that will lead to Democrats re-taking Congress in 2018 – but this time under a Speaker of the House who doesn’t take impeachment off the table even before the votes are counted.

And yet, I remember the last time dubious presidential election signaled the end of a Democratic president’s second term.

Sixteen years ago we all were confident that we could contain the cancer of illegitimate executive branch control to four years.

We were wrong.

Now?

Protest?

Sure.  Again – I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen today.

But also place your bets.

You might as well make a few bucks off of accurately predicting which American cities will be volunteered against their will to be the victim-props in the Russia-backed, white nationalist junta’s ever-so-convenient counterpart to 9/11 which – probably far quicker than Bush-Cheney so needed – it will need to fully distract an overwhelming majority of the populace and completely suppress dissent.

And, while you’re at it, place your bets as to which American cities will, once the Russia-backed, white nationalist junta manages to unite all of the world against America in global war, play the roles of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Place your bets.

You might as well make a buck.

Because if anything – well, anything in addition to roaches – survives the coming holocaust, it will be the obscenity of profit-above-all-else.

So, yes, long after the mushroom clouds dissipate, Chad Griffin will still be pulling down a half-mil per year.

As an American, that makes me feel great again already.

#sarcasm (in part)

Just a Few Hours ‘Til Jan. 20, 2017

It’s not January 19, 2017.

Well, Joe.  Now it is.

Two men posted disturbing video of themselves on Facebook beating a trans woman while shouting “Shoot that bitch.”

…

The footage shows two men in New Orleans using transphobic slurs and looking for victims. Towards the end of the video, one of the men appears to be beating a woman while holding a gun.

Noire wrote when she posted the video: “so these two ‘straight’ guys ‘volunteered’ their time to ride around their city targeting gay and trans people on the streets of (NO, Louisiana).”

Would ENDA have stopped this attack from happening?

Doubtful.

Would the victim in this attack have ever benefited from ENDA?

I have my thoughts, but I don’t know the woman so, for the time being, I’ll offer up what I do know: The federal hate crime law did not do squat to prevent that attack – or any attack on anyone anywhere ever – from happening.

Remind us again, Joe….

How much money  did you ‘earn’ at HRC just during the Obama years?

2 Days ‘Til Jan. 20, 2017

If ENDA doesn’t pass by then, will Joe Solmonese give back all any of the money he raked in as head of HRC?

Did Winning Marriage Equality Solve This Problem?

Whatever Happened To….

…you know?